The Easter Rising – One Hundred Years On

One hundred years ago, on Easter Monday 1916, Patrick Pearse and his Irish Volunteers, alongside James Connolly and the Irish Citizen Army, occupied a number of important buildings in the city of Dublin, beginning what became known as the Easter Rising. If you take a stroll around Dublin today there is still evidence of the Rising to be seen if you know where to look. I’ve visited the city a couple of times in recent years, and if you’re interested in seeing some of the photos I took whilst there, I suggest you start with the General Post Office, one of the most important rebel sites during the fighting.

The photo above shows the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, now the Irish Museum of Modern Art, headquarters of Sir John Maxwell, the British Commander-in-Chief during the Rising. There was heavy fighting in this area a hundred years ago, most notably at the South Dublin Union not far out of shot to the right of this photo, easily within range of a British machine gun sited on the roof of the hospital.